


The Battles Deep Inside You

by ohmytheon



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-26
Updated: 2013-11-26
Packaged: 2018-01-02 18:14:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1059967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmytheon/pseuds/ohmytheon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dacey Mormont knows exactly what she was born to do and what she will die for as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Battles Deep Inside You

**Author's Note:**

> Have some of my Mormont feels because they are the actual worst.

_She would die for him._

Most girls are given dolls when they are four or five. Dolls to play with, dolls to play pretend with, dolls to play house with. She knows this on some level. She dreams about it sometimes. What it must be like to want to play with dolls, to traipse around a castle with a straw-haired doll clutched tightly in her head, to hold the doll like a living baby and coo at it, be its mother, be its sister, be its everything. A girl without a doll is not a girl. It is a girl that lacks something so fundamental in the eyes of society. For how can a girl become a woman if she does not know how to love a child and be a mother?

Dacey is a mother though. She is a mother to her Morningstar, the name day gift her mother gave her when she was seven. Of course she could have gotten a doll if she truly wanted one. Bear Island could be a cruel place, but it was not without love or care. But it was if her own mother Maege knew in her heart that a doll was not meant to be in Dacey’s life. She took care of the Morningstar, small as it was compared to most others. Polished it, cleaned it after playing with it in the yard, lying it down carefully on her bedside table.

“I shall be like the lady on the gates, Mother,” she proclaims proudly, “’cept I won’t have a baby.”

Maege just smiles, a child suckling at her breast. “And so you shall not, lest you want one.”

“I’ve my baby sisters to look after,” Dacey says, tiptoeing over to her mother and sister. She pulls carefully at the baby girl’s chubby hand, letting the child wrap its tiny fingers around her own. “And Morningstar. She needs to be taken care of too.”

“Aye, you never want your weapons or armor to be rusty,” her mother agrees.

_She would die for him._

At four and ten, she bests some would-be suitor in a sparring match and he storms off furiously. He’s some lad from Barrowtown, too Southern for her taste, but she says nothing when he shows up with his family. Apparently his family knows her family and it’s just sort of expected by him that they could be married, though Maege Mormont has never uttered one word about a betrothal. After all, her mother is the Lady of Bear Island now that her uncle is the Lord Commander of the Wall and her cousin is exiled. Bear Island will go to her after her mother’s passing unless she had a son which did not seem likely anymore.

So of course the boy is startled when she challenges him to a duel. “If you think you are going to marry me, then you have to beat me first. Mormonts women do not marry or sleep with weak men.”

The boy is taken off guard and tries to demure at first. _No, no, I cannot fight a lady,_ he says; and _it would look bad on me should I injure you,_ he adds; and _my parents would say I reflected badly on them,_ he points out. But she knows that he is insulted by the idea that he is weak, especially weaker than her, because she is a woman and he is a boy that cannot understand the true North.

She tilts her head up, the sun shining on her face. “If you can’t beat me, then you can’t have me.”

And so they spar. It is a thing of beauty. She finds it relaxing, exhausting, and exhilarating. It’s almost like dancing, something she is just as graceful at, though she rarely shows that talent. At first, the boy goes easy on her, lets her have a few hits that she knows he could have easily avoided, so she turns quick on him, pushing him back almost viciously to the point where he falls on his ass. When she laughs, clear and bright, he pulls himself up from the dust, a bit red in the face. He attacks with more vigor now, hell-bent on showing her just who is boss, but she [spins](http://ohmytheon.tumblr.com/post/43093529268/the-battles-deep-inside-you-dacey-mormont-and-house) away from him and then shoves him back hard, making him fall down again.

Out of frustration, he throws the tourney sword aside and tackles her to the ground. After some struggling, she flips them over, so that she is the one on top, straddling him, and unsheathes a dagger and puts it to his throat, stilling him immediately. “Do you yield?” she asks, a grin on her face, panting.

He never comes back to Bear Island, though his family does on occasion. Her mother never says anything, never berates her, never punishes her. In fact, there is a proud gleam in her eyes as she looks upon her oldest daughter and the boy sits cowardly on his horse, determinedly not looking at her. Dacey is the spirit of the North. And if a man could not beat her, then how could he expect to survive the North?

_She would die for him._

How could a man love her if he could not love Bear Island?

“Do you regret not marrying?” she asks her mother one day when she is seven and ten.

Maege watches her youngest daughter, Lyanna, run around giggling after two of her older sisters, Jory and Lyra. Lyanna will be her last, though none of them know it yet. She is also the sweetest of her children, kind-hearted and endearing, though still just as strong and stubborn as all Mormont women. It has been the women of Bear Island for so long. There are men, to be sure, second cousins twice removed, stableboys, smiths, and cooks and more. But they all revere the women of House Mormont. Dacey knows it is not like this in other holds, castles, or lands. She knows that women are pretty things to be kept in cages.

But she knows that love can be both a cage and a gate, though she has never felt its sting before.

“No,” her mother finally settles on, “I have never regretted not marrying.”

Dacey bites her lip. “My father… Did you…did you love him?”

“No,” her mother says without a pause, “I did not. He cared little for this place, thought it ugly and crass.”

It does not dishearten Dacey to hear this. She has known for quite some time that her mother did not love her father, but she wanted to hear it for herself. Instead, it warms her. It warms her to know that her mother did not love a man, did not have to love a man, did not have to be with a man, in order to have the children that she clearly loves. She was not stuck with someone out of courtesy or duty or societal views. Her mother did as she pleased, as she wanted; and if her mother could, then so could she. Besides, how could she ever want to be with someone that did not understand the cold beauty of her home?

“I loved Lyra and Jory’s father though,” her mother adds suddenly. “I thought…maybe…maybe I would marry him, but…” She smiles at her oldest daughter, her oldest who would understand her best, who would one day know what she meant. “My heart has always been meant to be free. And perhaps I only had enough room in me to love my daughters.”

Dacey looks back at her sisters. Lyanna talks about getting married sometimes, though there are other days when she says that boys are gross. Alysanne has had her first tryst with some blacksmith boy that she thinks she might be in love with. She confessed it to Dacey just a week ago, her thoughts clouded with doubt and hope and frustrations. She does not want to be tied down by love, is resentful of it, and scared by it. They have all been brought up to know that they are the harbingers of their own [futures](http://ohmytheon.tumblr.com/post/43093529268/the-battles-deep-inside-you-dacey-mormont-and-house).

“I am never going to marry,” Dacey decides. She pats the Morningstar on her side, the same one she was given when she was a child. It fits her now. Whereas it had been large for her as a girl, it is just her size now. “I have my husband,” she adds with a laugh.

_She would die for him._

The banners are called. She goes without hesitation alongside her mother and Alysanne.

“House Mormont has no sons to offer to their liege lord of House Stark,” Maege says, “but we have warriors all the same.”

Robb Stark is a child still. Dacey knows this, but she says nothing. He is her liege lord and she would do well to respect him. Still, even as a child, he shows some sort of promise. With the powerful Greatjon Umber on one side and cunning Roose Bolton on the other and his large snarling direwolf Grey Wind ever in his presence, Robb Stark makes for a striking figure.

“I thank you for your service,” he says, and that is all there is. He never once comments on the fact that a lady should not be fighting. He never once turns her away. When it comes time to decide who will be a part of his guard, Dacey is chosen over a handful of sons. Many men seem shocked. Lord Bolton makes some sort of quiet comment that earns a glare from her mother, but no one ever says anything.

The men have seen her fight. They know how deadly she can be in battle.

They still do not understand the women of House Mormont, but here she will stand, by her liege lord’s side. By her king’s side. Without question, she will go into battle with him. Without a second thought, she will fight for him. It is for the honor of House Mormont, of the North, of House Stark, of her king, of her mother and sisters and cousin and uncle.

It is here that she finds love in honor. She loves it more than anything else she has ever loved before because honor frees her.

_She would die for him._

“You remind me of my sister, Arya,” he tells her one night while she walks him back to his tent. He has spent the evening with his pretty wife, Jeyne Westerling, as much time as can be allowed, as they will be [traveling](http://ohmytheon.tumblr.com/post/43093529268/the-battles-deep-inside-you-dacey-mormont-and-house) to the Twins for Lord Edmure’s wedding soon.

Dacey tilts her head at him. “Your youngest sister?”

“Yes, she…” He swallows hard. He rarely, if ever, talks about his siblings. His brothers are dead; his sister Sansa is married to a Lannister; and his sister Arya has faded into nonexistence. Now that the Kingslayer has been released by his mother, in hopes that his sisters will be returned to them, he has grown even more despondent. She realizes that he must miss them and she remembers that he is only six and ten. What would she do should her sisters be taken away from her so abruptly?

She would kill every person that hurt them. That is what she would do.

He clears his throat. “She wanted to be a knight, as you are.”

“Ser Dacey Mormont.” The title has a certain mocking tone to it, even in her own mouth. She grins a little. “Sounds awful, doesn’t it.”

“It’s true though,” Robb insists. “You are as much of a knight as any of the men. You’re just as capable too. I certainly wouldn’t want to fight you if you had that Morningstar of yours in your hand.”

“Seldom men do, Your Grace. What honor is there in fighting a woman, most men would say.”

“Most men do not know you.” Robb smiles tiredly at her, gratefully even. “I would be dead if it were not for you, I’ve no doubt of that. No one here could ever doubt your loyalty towards your king, House Stark, or the North. You fight with honor.”

“That is all I have ever wanted to do, Your Grace,” Dacey tells him, and it is the truth. She knows this now. She understands it. She knows how she can love something so fiercely – but it not be a person or a thing. She loves what she is doing with her life. Fighting for her king, for her liege lord, for her people, for her family – it is what she was meant to do. She should have known right then and there when she was five and her mother gave her the Morningstar on her name day. She was born to be a warrior, no matter her gender or what society told her.

_She will die for him._

Even as she sees the ax coming towards her and she thinks about how she wanted to fight just one more battle and she sees Lyanna pretending her dolls are in tourney and Jory telling a crude joke she heard from a sailor and Lyra sitting in a tree throwing pinecones and Alysanne sharpening her sword and her mother riding swift to Greywater Watch–

Dacey Mormont knows this was the life and death she was born to have.


End file.
